Capacocha!

I’m not going to lie. This blog post may be lacking creativity as I am swamped with projects and papers that are due over the next couple of weeks and my brain is basically fried. However. I will attempt to discuss interesting things for all of your enjoyment.

The group project that I am apart of for this class is based on Ritual Sacrifices - we decided to focus that even more and look at Incan child sacrifices, specifically, on a type of sacrificial ceremony called a capacocha. This type of ceremony involves children being chosen or parents volunteering their children (:|) to be apart of a special ceremony that can last months. The children are treated very well once they are chosen; they are fed very fancy meals, clothed nicely and in most cases go on a trip to either the top of a mountain (where the sacrifice happens) and in some cases, at the bottom of mountains/valleys. Because many of the sacrifices were near the tops of the mountains the bodies of the children have been preserved quite well, even some of their internal organs are still in place and therefore, there can be a proper coroners report on the bodies - which can determine what the children were eating and what kind of health conditions they were in when they were killed. This is how they know about the types of food they were eating, etc. Many of the bodies still have their hair on the head and even their arms! I just think that is crazy. Anyway, moving along. The children were usually buried with different types of grave goods. One of the best grave goods that I have stumbled across in my research is a 25 cm silver figurine. That’s a pretty big deal guys. Fancy.

I’m not going to write too much more about the capacochas because that IS what our project is about and I’d love it if you guys would look at our project once it is all put together and makes more sense - I will post the tumblr soon... Since right now it is a mess of our group writing notes back and forth to each other.